Hidden treasures in club pubs

Club publications are an excellent resource for their articles, photos and networking resources. Equally as importantly, club pubs often provide excellent sources through display and classified ads for the small bits and parts that keep old cars like yours on the road.

As a dreamer who loves many different types of cars, I often find myself paging through the club publications of many different clubs. Among those is Woodie Times, the publication of the National Woodie Club. This magazine-format club publication is edited by Old Cars Weekly columnist John Lee, who does a fantastic job. However, it wasn’t just Lee’s editorial skills that caught my attention in the February issue of Woodie Times, it was a classified listing for a picnic table. “A picnic table?,” you ask? It’s not just any old picnic table, but one actually used by Ford Motor Co. employees at the Iron Moutnain plant where the bodies for Ford woodies were constructed.

According to the ad, the maple picnic table was constructed of the same solid maple used to build Ford wagon bodies and came in to posession of an Iron Mountain Ford employee upon the plant’s closing in 1951 (In 1952, Ford went to steel wagons).

What’s interesting about the table is its proof of provenance. The table features two tags on its leg: one simply gives a number (perhaps some type of property number), and a second tag that states “Property of Ford Motor Co.” and “If detatched, forward to tag dept.” There is a also number on this tag that reads much like an automotive serial number.

If you’re a collector of all things Ford, a cooler collectible you will not find! Plus, you can eat your hickory-smoked barbecue off it the next time you have fellow woodie members over for dinner.

To learn more about the National Woodie Club, write to: John Lee, PO Box Lincoln, NE 68506, or e-mail johnlee@neb.rr.com, or go to www.nationalwoodieclub.com.

To give dues-paying club members a fair chance at responding to this classified ad, I will post the seller’s contact info in the next week.